Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/96

64 wife does the rough washing, says that when we die we fly from one planet to the other. That 's a story, but it would be great fun, if it were true. I wish I could just take a little leap up there, and my body could remain here on the steps!"

There are certain things in the world one has to be careful about saying, but one ought to be still more careful if one has got the galoshes of fortune on one's feet. Just listen what happened to the watchman.

As far as we human beings are concerned, nearly all of us know the great speed which can be obtained by steam; we see it on the railways and on the steamers crossing the seas. Yet the speed thus obtained is like the pace of the sloth or the snail compared with the rapidity with which light travels; it flies nineteen million times faster than the best race-horse. And yet electricity is still more rapid. Death is an electric shock which we receive in the heart, and on the wings of electricity the liberated soul flies away. A ray of sunlight takes eight minutes and some seconds for its journey over ninety-five millions of miles; with the express speed of electricity a soul needs some minutes less to do the same journey. The distance between the planets is no greater for the soul than the distance between the houses of friends in the same town, even if they are quite close to one another. But this electric shock to the heart costs us the use of our body here below, unless, like the watchman, we happen to have the galoshes of fortune on our feet.

In a few seconds the watchman had traversed the distance of two hundred and fifty thousand miles to the moon, which, as we know, is of a much lighter substance than our earth, and as soft as new-fallen snow, as we might say. He found himself on one of the numerous circular mountains which we know from Dr. Mädeer's large map of the moon. I suppose you have seen this? Inside the ring the mountain formed a caldron with steep sides, about five miles deep; at the bottom of the caldron lay a town, which had the same appearance as the white of an egg poured into a glass of water, with towers, and cupolas, and galleries, like waving sails, all transparent and floating in the thin air. Our globe floated like a large fiery ball above his head.

There were many beings to be seen, most probably what we should call human beings, but they looked quite different to us; they had a language of their own, but although no one could expect the watchman's soul to understand it, it did so for all that.

The watchman's soul understood the language of the inhabitants of the moon very well. They discussed about our globe, and explained their doubts as to its being inhabited; the air there, they said, must be too thick for any sensible dweller on the moon to live in. They considered that the moon alone was inhabited by living beings, and was, after all, the only globe on which the ancient peoples of the planets had ever lived.